Information Commissioner’s Office

Ok here is the Information Commissioner’s Office cookie acceptance request. So let’s say I don’t have a clue and do not want to accept, maybe if I click continue then it will go away. Well that would be wrong, clicking continue with out accepting comes up with.

“You must tick the ‘I accept cookies from this site’ box to accept.”

Now the impression I get is 90% of the people who use the internet will think

• I must accept it or
• I will accept it as I hate that damn box at the top of my screen

The Cookie Collective

Then I found this one which is even better, a constant box that has only one option ‘Allow’.

No doubt a lot more sites that have started to implement this would have gone down the same route.

The Problem

The law is pretty pointless if web admin/developers are going to make it so they push you towards accepting anyway.

My first thought was adding a No option which could be recorded using Sessions and then at least remove the box for the users duration on the site. Granted when they come back they will have to say No again but for sites I visit once or at least not regularly it could be a solution.

Obviously none of these sites owners want people to say No and want you to use cookies so I don’t see this happening.

Myths & Exceptions

I have been reading a lot of comments about people complaining about cookie usage in shopping baskets. Well according to the new law we do have some exceptions. One of them being…

A cookie used to remember the goods a user wishes to buy when they proceed to the checkout or add goods to their shopping basket

Also another one for example is for online banking services…

Certain cookies providing security that is essential to comply with the security requirements of the seventh data protection principle for an activity the user has requested

Lastly you have

cookies that distribute page loading workload across numerous computers to speed up loading time

TwitPic Redesign

Back in the middle of January TwitPic had a major redesign which in turn completely killed my TwitPic Exporter. The source code changed for most of TwitPic’s web pages which meant my scraper screwed up completely.

Changes

Posterous importer has now been disabled due to API changes on the Posterous end. Now that Twitter has acquired Posterous it might not be the safest place for your TwitPic data anyway.

In the redesign they have also changed the date format which means that photos posted after 7 days will not be 100% accurate. We are talking about a few hours though not a few days.

What else?

Nothing else and the best news is that exporting your photos from TwitPic you will still have the following options.

• Save to file (gzip/zip) / General Backup
• Flickr
• WordPress
• MobyPicture
• yFrog
• Tumblr
• TwitrPix
• Picasa

• How do you start a new game in Grand Prix Story?
• Can’t delete previous 2 games?
• Please tell me how to start a new game?

What to do?

Step 1 – Click on where the finger is pointing.
Step 2 – Click on New Game!
Step 3 – Click on Yes to overwrite previous game!

Yeah a very lame and quick post but you won’t believe how many times I have seen people complaining because they cannot start a new game.

Oh by the way this game is as good as the previous games from Kairosoft. You can also check out my hack for more money on Game Dev Story.

Why delete my TwitPic images?

You might be asking why can I not just just delete my TwitPic account, well the problem with that is by deleting the account you still give TwitPic the right to use the image’s you posted. The only way that TwitPic will stop using your images is by actually deleting each image which can be a tedious task if you have a few 100. Yeah TwitPic really does suck in every way.

This is why I decided to create this extension as I noticed people were using my TwitPic Exporter and just deleting the account without removing the images. So here you go it’s easy to install and twice as easy to use.

Why use an extension?

Quite simple really it’s quick, easy and means my TwitPic Exporter website does not need to hit TwitPic website hundreds if not thousands of times.

What to do?

• Install my Delete TwitPic Images Chrome Extension
• Go to http://twitpic.com/
• Click on Home link – http://twitpic.com/photos/TWITTER_USERNAME
• Click on TwitPic icon in url bar
  
• Once all pictures deleted it will take you to the delete account page
• All Done!
• You might as well go to ‘Tools’ – ‘Extension’ and uninstall the ‘Delete TwitPic Images’ extension as you won’t need it anymore

Download

Google Extension: Delete TwitPic

Screenshot

Initially I looked into a WordPress plugin that could do the job for me and to tell you the truth the plugin is very good. Anyway the reason I didn’t decide to use it was that in the future I intend to do a blog overhaul and had no intention to run my tweeted images through WordPress, so I decided to write my own way of tweeting images.

The only bad part is that currently only Twitter for iPhone and Twitterrific for iPhone support custom image url posting which was a pain because I enjoy using the TweetBot app.
Well TweetBot has had an awesome update and now supports custom image url posting. So that means Twitter for iPhone, Twitterrific for iPhone and TweetBot now has support for custom url posting.

Responsive Images

With all this newish talk on Responsive Web Design I thought I would do a little investigating but really all I needed was responsive images as really don’t have the time for designing/coding a new site. So I put a little something together just so I can get my tweeted images away from ANY third party photo sharing sites.

In the end I went with an experimental idea from the filament group which was exactly what I was looking for short term, it’s not perfect and in the long term I will be looking at a better solution.
Taken from their website:

The goal of this technique is to deliver optimized, contextual image sizes for responsive layouts that utilize dramatically different image sizes at different resolutions. Ideally, this approach will allow developers to start with mobile-optimized images in their HTML and specify a larger size to be used for users with larger screen resolutions — without requesting both image sizes, and without UA sniffing.

Quite simply it puts a low resolution image up to start with and then will update it with a full resolution image if they have larger screen resolutions. It works perfect on my iPhone and I also have tried it out on Windows Phone.

Current Progress

At the moment all I have set up is the ability to attach photos to tweets, the ability to view them on http://photos.stevenbullen.com/, a feed of the last 12 images posted to the footer of my blog (replacing both my old flickr and twitpic images) and also I have imported all my old TwitPic/Flickr images (using my TwitPic Exporter to grab the pictures).
The domain http://photos.stevenbullen.com/ is currently unavailable as that will be the location to view all of my images posted in the past, but if you want to check out an example just click on any of the images in the footer.

I have sketched out my plans for the front page and also will add some other neat features in the near future.

Example

TweetBot Image Upload Problems

Now that TweetBot has added a Custom API Endpoint for image uploads some of you may have issues if you created your own site to interact with it. The problem is that some third party services respond to the TweetBot API with an xml format simliar to below.

<image>
<mediaurl>http://bit.ly/blahblah/</mediaurl>
</image>

It doesn’t understand that and even though the photo will be posted fine it will not send the tweet and come up with some sort of error, to get around this you can either change to a JSON response or just give it the following text.

<mediaurl>http://bit.ly/blahblah/</mediaurl>

It’s pretty straightforward and I advise you untick all the options, definitely if you have a twitter client with push notifications.

• Go to Twitter.com
• Click on Settings
• Click on Notifications

I don’t understand twitter, because right now millions of users are getting a ridiculous amount of emails that they will not want. I would love to find out how many people will turn this option off within 24 hours, the only thing that comes to mind is that new users who don’t get many mentions, rarely gets tweets favorited and when someone retweets them.

I like that they add features that people might use but turning them on by default is a bit lame. Oh well you can see above mine are all switched off so won’t be visiting twitter site again for a while.

The New York Times has done a piece Fine Print Blurs Who’s in Control of Online Photos which has an interesting comment from a popular TwitPic user who has photos that get on average way over 40,000+ hits each.

World Entertainment News would not say whether it intended to pay celebrities for their Twitpic photos or how they might opt out. A representative for “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” said that Ms. DeGeneres, a regular Twitpic user, had not been consulted about the agreement. She added that Ms. DeGeneres would stop using the service.

If you check TheEllenShow TwitPic account you can see that she stopped using the service on the 12th May and in the comment above is now going to stop using the service completely.

It also mentions that the user was not contacted about the agreement which was obvious because if someone emailed you stating that we own your photos and we can sell them to the WENN corp when we see fit you would no doubt tell them to piss off. In other words when TwitPic can make lots of money from your photos they will sell them.

150 Celebrity account to several hundred in 2 weeks

The other thing they mention in the article is that the deal only covers several hundred celebrity accounts.

Twitpic did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and neither company has made the details of the agreement public. Mr. Beiny said in an e-mail that the deal covered only the accounts of several hundred celebrities. He declined to comment further.

Well when I wrote my last post (TwitPic updates terms of service again) 2 weeks ago, I actually contacted TwitPic regarding my photos and they came back with the following comment and they even stated that it only covered 150 celebrities.

To put it in the clearest non-legal words (since I’m not a lawyer–just a lowly customer service rep) We are selling images from about 150 users–all of them big name celebrities. You’re not on the list. We will not be selling your images or trying to make a profit off of you (beyond placing ads on the photo pages on Twitpic.)

So in 2 weeks it has gone from 150 celebrity accounts to several hundred, which means in two weeks we will be on a 1000 celebrity accounts and so on, so my advice is to stop using TwitPic right now.

I think after I have finished my TwitPic Exporter (see below) I will need to write a post that shows that TwitPic won’t be the only company making this move. Quite a few of the other Twitter-Photo sharing sites have terms of service that state they could make this move as well and even if they don’t nothing stops them from changing terms of service a year down the line.

Exporting TwitPic Photos

If you are looking to export your photos then keep an eye out as I will be releasing a TwitPic exporter very shortly that will let you export all your photos, descriptions and tags.
I have now released the TwitPic Exporter by all means check it out if you want to remove your images.

Unfortunately my first release will not be including video uploads, but checking over 50 random accounts with over 200 photos not one had posted a video.

You can follow me on twitter @stevenbullen for the latest updates but initial release will be in the next day or two.

Problem

The BBC was adding the daily gossip into the RSS feed early in the morning, which meant when I went to check google reader I would need to make sure I didn’t mark it as read because they would add more gossip as the day progressed. Yes I could just check out the site each evening but I am pretty lazy, also pretty anal when my iPhone has a little number 1 sitting on the Reeder app <- Highly recommended iPhone,iPad and Mac app for RSS feeds.

Result

So I knocked up a page that would gather the information from the BBC website and then update a twitter account (which I could follow) with all the latest updates including the latest gossip.
It took an hour to write it and about an hour to debug any problems that cropped up, will check over the results tomorrow and if needed do a few tweaks but overall it works pretty well. You will also notice a tumblr page below that holds all the information, but also was required as any news that is over 140 characters and has no source link on the BBC.

http://twitter.com/bbcf1news
http://bbcf1news.tumblr.com/
Tumblr RSS Feed

Update

I have put this on the back burner for the moment. Will come back to it another day/week as got a lot on my plate and don’t have time to take a good look at it.

What does it use?

• PHP
• Twitter oAuth API
• Tumblr API
• bit.ly API

TwitPic changes Terms of Service again

Earlier it come to my attention due to a retweet 6 hours ago that not everything is what it used to be. (Thank you @attaboy)

Were you aware that, as of May 4th, by using TwitPic you give them the rights to sell your photos? http://twitpic.com/terms.do I’m out.

Checking back on the internet archive you can see that the terms of service for TwitPic was something very simple and to the point. In fact the whole terms of service page clocked 111 words and the most important bit concerning Copyright was only 9 words.

All images uploaded are copyright © their respective owners

Well today the terms of service page has a whopping 1,555 words and the Copyright section hits an amazing 940 words and the part I have a problem with is below

You retain all ownership rights to Content uploaded to Twitpic. However, by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

Just to make it clear the new terms of service does make it clear that no third party can use my TwitPic pictures without TwitPic’s consent. Yes not my consent, but TwitPic’s.
The problem I have is the section above which state that TwitPic can “transfer license” to their “affiliate” sites without my permission.

TwitPic have obviously been getting some stick about the terms of service update because they even come out and wrote a post Your content, your copyrights stating the following.

To clarify our ToS regarding ownership, you the user retain all copyrights to your photos and videos, it’s your content. Our terms state by uploading content to Twitpic you allow us to distribute that content on twitpic.com and our affiliated partners. This is standard among most user-generated content sites (including Twitter). If you delete a photo or video from Twitpic, that content is no longer viewable.

Conclusion

I have to confess that whilst writing this post it does come across that most (if not all) of the Twitter photo-sharing services have some form of “transferable license” clause in the terms of service which gives me the impression that the best route to go is self-hosting your images. I will be writing a post to export/remove all your images from TwitPic.

Update

Well it looks like I was right. According to the British Journal of Photography it looks like TwitPic have signed a controversial deal with the WENN company.
This is quite amusing as the email reply I got from TwitPic support today had the following statement in regarding the above paragraph and affiliates.

Regarding the second paragraph you quoted: we are not selling your photos to anyone, and we will not sell your photos to anyone. The legal language in the paragraph is almost verbatim what you would find in the Terms for any other large media/photo sharing site (I encourage you to look at other’s Terms–I won’t name them, but you probably name 10 off the top of your head.)

I have replied back with news that they have signed this deal and do they still stand by what they said, I have a funny feeling my response will be a lot slower than the previous one.

Update 2

Well I have just received an update to my mail.

To put it in the clearest non-legal words (since I’m not a lawyer–just a lowly customer service rep) We are selling images from about 150 users–all of them big name celebrities. You’re not on the list. We will not be selling your images or trying to make a profit off of you (beyond placing ads on the photo pages on Twitpic.)

TwitPic Exporter

I have now released the TwitPic Exporter by all means check it out if you want to remove your images from TwitPic.

Games Left To Play

Liverpool
H Liverpool vs Tottenham
A Aston Villa vs Liverpool

Man City
H Man City vs Tottenham
H Man City vs Stoke
A Bolton vs Man City

If we win our final two games we will be sitting on 64 points which would guarantee the fifth spot. But if Man City can have some bad results and pick up 2 or less points from the final 3 games then that Champions League spot is viable and could even go down to goal difference.

The biggest problem is that only once this season has Man City had the run of bad results that we need now, that was back in January and it was 2 draws (Birmingham/Notts County) and 1 loss (Aston Villa) other than that they have not gone three games without a win.

Conclusion

It’s possible but I wouldn’t put a big bet on it! Maybe a small one as a £2 bet could get you a return of £42 at BetFair right now.

Update – May 10th 23:08

Well Man City beat Tottenham 1-0 which puts fourth spot out of our reach. Looks like we will be playing for fifth spot now.